Brothers and sisters of students are welcome on campus for activities, picnics and to get a feel for university life

UC San Diego student Nicole Delacruz holds her sister Maria, 7, on her lap as other sisters Anne, 16 (center), and Mary, 12, watch their egg package being dropped from the second floor in a sibling egg drop competition. Peggy Peattie • U-T

UC San Diego student Nicole Delacruz holds her sister Maria, 7, on her lap as other sisters Anne, 16 (center), and Mary, 12, watch their egg package being dropped from the second floor in a sibling egg drop competition. Peggy Peattie • U-T

Point Loma 
As a first-generation U.S. citizen and the first in his family to attend college, UC San Diego sophomore Jehoan Espinoza hopes he’s blazing an academic path his little brother will want to follow.

To that end, he invited 10-year-old Mark to this month’s Siblings Weekend at the La Jolla campus. For two days, students and their siblings spent time together watching college basketball, sharing a picnic lunch and finding ways to try to keep intact an egg dropped from the top of a building, among other activities.

The University of California San Diego offered the program for the first time this year. It is one of more than a dozen colleges nationwide that invite siblings to spend time on campus, said Laci Weeden, director of the university’s Parents and Family Program.

Many colleges have hosted Family Weekends for years, including San Diego State University and the University of San Diego. These gatherings give parents, grandparents and siblings the chance to get a feel for campus life, meet professors and even, in certain cases, sit in on classes.

Weeden brought along the idea of a siblings event when she moved to UC San Diego in December 2011 from North Carolina State University. The goal is to emphasize family support for students while they’re pursuing their education goals.

“We hope that the family members feel good about UC San Diego and that this further helps them to be connected to the university,” Weeden said. “We want all the families to feel like UC San Diego cares about the entire family, that the entire family is part of the Triton family.”

Some of the students who signed up, including 19-year-old Espinoza from San Fernando Valley, said they were particularly interested in motivating their younger siblings by giving them a taste of campus life.

“I just want (my brother) to have that college environment, to already know that he can go to college, that his big brother is doing amazing things. He can do amazing things as well,” said Espinoza, who is majoring in international studies. “I want him to realize he wants to go to school sooner than later.”

By the end of Siblings Weekend, Espinoza said his brother was saying he wanted to study at UC San Diego when he is older.

Weeden believes she would have benefited from such a program when she went to college in the 1990s. Her mother, who lived in Washington, D.C., dropped her off on campus her freshman year at Appalachian State in North Carolina. Her mother returned to the campus only for graduation weekend.

Weeden would reach out to her mother for help when she faced problems such as needing to drop a class, dealt with roommate issues or got sick. But her mother was unable to assist in navigating the college red tape.

While few colleges offer events focused on siblings, more have hosted programs for the whole family.

This fall’s Family Weekend at UC San Diego attracted about 1,750 people, up from roughly 900 the year before. San Diego State has organized a family weekend for the past 15 years, inviting parents and other relatives of students to visit campus in October, said Michelle Guerra, the university’s parent liaison and assistant director of new student and parent programs.